Re: [xml-dev] a report on any xml file, what information is useful?

From
bryan rasmussen <>
To
Frans Englich <>
Date
2006-09-07T14:15:19Z
ID
<>
Thread
Re: [xml-dev] a report on any xml file, what information is useful?
Well the project is not considered so much as a product but as an XML
specialist set of tools. This is one of the simpler tools in the set.

Cheers,
Bryan Rasmussen

On 9/7/06, Frans Englich <> wrote:
> On Thursday 07 September 2006 13:48, bryan rasmussen wrote:
> > Hi,
> >
> > If you were generating views of XML files for display in some editor
> > type environment what would people be interested in seeing in sort of
> > a side display, things I can think of offhand -
> >
> > 1. Number of namespaces used
> > 2. number of namespaced elements
> > 3. Does it use specific namespaces
> > 4. Any possible links in the documents
> > 5. IDS and IDREFs?
> > 6. XML Schema references?
>
> I don't think that's a good way to approach it. I think one should start with
> what determining what the user do, to then conclude what the user need. For
> example, why would the user like to know the amount of namespaces? Many GUIs
> are over-loaded with complexity, and one thing that could contribute is
> statistics that aren't useful.
>
> What I sometimes have felt an urge for is to know at what child-position an
> element has. For example, let's saying I'm edding node d:
>
> <a>
>         <b/>
>         <c/>
>         <d/>
>         <e/>
> </a>
>
> Then I would like to know that it's the third child, because it's not so
> uncommon for content to somehow be related to that, according to my
> experience.
>
> I also wonder whether xml-dev is the right place for this kind of user-centric
> questions. xml-dev isn't exactly representative.
>
>
> Cheers,
>
>                 Frans
>